ities, almost
certain that the great French romances (which contain the whole legend
with the exception of part of the Tristram story, and of hitherto
untraced excursions like Malory's Beaumains) had been thrown into
shape. But the origin, the authorship, and the order of _Merlin_ in
its various forms, of the _Saint Graal_ and the _Quest_ for it, of
_Lancelot_ and the _Mort Artus_,--these things are the centre of
nearly all the disputes upon the subject.

[Sidenote: _Walter Map._]

A consensus of MS. authority ascribes the best and largest part of
the _prose_ romances,[47] especially those dealing with Lancelot and
the later fortunes of the Graal and the Round Table company, to no
less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the
author of _De Nugis Curialium_, the reputed author (_v._ chap. i.) of
divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford,
churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been
shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the
number, antiquity, and strength of the documents by which it is
attested. Map's date (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities were
equal to any literary performance; his evident familiarity with things
Welsh (he seems to have been a Herefordshire man) would have informed
him of Welsh tradition, if there was any, and the _De Nugis Curialium_
shows us in him, side by side with a satirical and humorous bent, the
leaning to romance and to the marvellous which only extremely shallow
people believe to be alien from humour. But it is necessary for
scholarship of the kind just referred to to be always devising some
new thing. Frenchmen, Germans, and Celticising partisans have grudged
an Englishman the glory of the exploit; and there has been of late a
tendency to deny or slight Map's claims. His deposition, however,
rests upon no solid argument, and though it would be exceedingly rash,
considering the levity with which the copyists in mediaeval MSS.
attributed authorship, to assert positively that Map wrote _Lancelot_,
or the _Quest of the Saint Graal_, it may be asserted with the utmost
confidence that it has not been proved that he did not.

[Footnote 47: These, both Map's and Borron's (_v. infra_), with some
of the verse forms connected with them, are in a very puzzling
condition for study. M. Paulin Paris's book, above referred to,
abstracts most of them; the actual texts, as far as published, are
chiefly